Small flash fics dedicated to the characters and relationships of the Midnight Mass miniseries, written with the help of the special words of Writober 2021 ♥
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(Riley Flynn / Father Paul Hill) •••
Away from prying eyes, there is a contact that the world is not allowed to admire. Something that wraps around arms wrapped around small shoulders, something that not even God can explain. Nor the devil. Neither did fate, a mother or Crockett herself.
Riley doesn't even know, what the hell has been happening to him since that man arrived on the island, but he knows he can't stop thinking about him for a moment, craving his presence, wondering how long you separate him from. see it again. Yet, when they are together, and hears him talking about God, original sin, the Bible, the Angels, and how useless it is to take on a guilt that he does not have, Riley feels the urge to run away and never go back there, to be say what he will never accept.
That is, he is not a killer and that what happened was just an accident he could not control, a sin he would never have committed. Which he hasn't actually committed.
But what the hell does Father Paul want to know about what Riley is or isn't? What does he want to know about what he feels inside, how much the sense of guilt has been wearing him down for more than four years; the prison didn't help, it just gave him more free time alone to think about it. And what does Father Paul want to know about the demons who keep him awake at night, about she looking at him, with his face destroyed and the lights of the sirens that bathe her in blue and red.
And Riley thinks, thinks, thinks ... what he might have become , if he hadn't taken from her a gift as great as that of life. If only he hadn't drunk so much he fell asleep on the wheel. If only he had never left Crockett to find a better life.
Who knows, maybe now he would be unhappy, with the doubt of what could have happened if he had reached the continent and left that island behind, but at least he would not have that big man who is permanently stuck in the gorge and which, today, he has not been able to hold back.
He talked about justice, about God, about forgiveness, about the things that he can or cannot control and Riley, inside, knows that he is no longer in control of anything, and does not even want to hold the reins of that life and pilot it anymore. somewhere. He's on autopilot , every day is the same and if he's trying to get out of that tunnel of depression and darkness, he's only doing it for his family, not to hurt his mother, to give his father a way to be. proud of him and to prove to Warren that he's not the failed older brother he probably thinks he is but, no, he's not doing it for him. He stopped doing things for him for a long time, and left her soul on that bridge, where the accident happened, and never went to retrieve it.
Yet, even though He speaks to him about God and how merciful he is, today Riley doesn't want to run away anymore, he just wants to feel alive, understood and, in some way, loved.
He burst into tears that blocked Father Paul's words in his throat and forced him to admit, tacitly, that God is not always what we need. He puckered his lips, and that's the last thing Riley saw, before he found himself squeezed into that man's arms and placed his forehead on his chest with all the confidence possible and reciprocated that squeeze. He is tall, has broader shoulders than hers and encloses him as if it were his container. As if it were a cloak, an armor. And Riley, for the first time in four years, feels safe.
He feels the ground under his feet disappear and the weight of the world shift, for a moment, elsewhere and his shoulders ache. It is a pain, however, that he can take. Which is no worse than what he feels inside and, alone in those arms, he feels beyond time, space and guilt. In a floating world that has nothing to do with Crockett, with feelings of guilt, with duties, with failures and with loss and living in the moment. He breathes the smell of cologne that Father Paul emanates and reminds him of distant times, too ancient , but which he cannot place in time and which, for now, he does not want to find. He just wants to stay there, locked up in that bubble and stay there forever or at least until someone tells him that everything will be okay, that he has nothing to fear, that he hasn't hurt anyone.
"Riley," Father Paul calls him; it's so strange to hear his name come out of those lips, in that voice so calm - the same one that sometimes makes him nervous, makes him want to punch him in the face, yet now he just wants to hear him repeat his name up to the end of his days.
He does not answer, he just becomes smaller in those arms and Father Paul seems almost a giant who still holds him and with the warmth of a man who has lost faith for a second. He kisses his hair and Riley has a shiver down his spine, and it's the first, real sensation he can say he's experienced after four years of nothing.
He looks up, meets that of the priest, who smiles at him and does not go beyond that gesture, even if ... even if, to be honest, in those dark irises, Riley has read us a common desire that they cannot satisfy and that apparently he will remain dormant within both of them without ever going beyond that embrace.
For now, though, that's okay.
It was enough for him, even if it was only for a moment, that hug that encompassed him entirely and that, in the end, gave him more love than Riley thinks he deserves.
